Dewhurst: Second special session likley unless ‘certain items’ pass

UPDATED: Full audio of Dewhurst talking to reporters is now available below.

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst strongly hinted Sunday that Gov. Rick Perry would call lawmakers back to work if certain bills failed to pass during the current special session.

Dewhurst, talking to reporters shortly after the Senate recessed for the day, declined to say specifically which proposals Perry would call a second special for if they failed. But a package of bills containing some of the toughest abortion restrictions in the country has been the center of attention.

Aside from the abortion measures, a bill to boost transportation funding and a proposal dealing with sentencing guidelines for 17-year-old murderers are also currently in limbo. The Legislature must pass those measures before the special session wraps up Tuesday or face the potential for Perry to call a second special session.

“Unless I’m misreading him, we’re going to be called back in,” Dewhurst said. “There are certain items on this call that he shared with me that are a must pass.”

The most pressing of the issues still up in the air for Republicans, which control the House and Senate, is clearly the abortion proposals. Dewhurst, along with Republicans in both chambers, lobbied Perry to add the measures to the special session.

A catch-all anti-abortion proposal — Senate Bill 5 — would ban the procedure at 20 weeks, would allow abortions only in surgical facilities, require doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital and place greater controls on abortion-inducing medications.

That bill is currently being debated by the House, which is expected to give it the green light late Sunday. House Democrats, however, have been using stalling tactics to try and wind down as much time off the clock as possible (consider this: the House gaveled in for the day at 2 p.m. and just took up SB 5 at roughly 8 p.m.).

And that’s the biggest problem for Republicans at this point: time. They’re short on it and as a result have left the door open for a potential marathon-style filibuster in the Senate on the abortion bills, if the proposals end up needing to go back to the upper chamber.

SB 5 originally contained the 20-week ban but that was stripped before the upper chamber passed the bill Tuesday.

The House amended the proposal and re-injected the 20-week ban, which means the Senate will have to concur with the changes before sending the measure to Perry.

Also: under Senate rules, the upper chamber will have to wait 24-hours before it can bring the bill back up for consideration. So if the House passes the anti-abortion measures Sunday, the earliest the proposals could hit the Senate floor is Tuesday morning.

That leaves the door open for Democrats to try and filibuster until sine die.

Or the House could simply ditch the 20-week ban and pass SB5 the same way the Senate did.

Dewhurst declined to say if he preferred to have the 20-week ban gutted from the House proposal but made clear the House needs to act soon to ensure time doesn’t run out.

“If they leave that provision in the bill, then I would move to pull together the votes to concur,” he said. “If it gets here too late were’ in filibuster range for somebody who can talk from 12 to 36 hours.”